shellfish

San Diego native Megan Olbur didn't grow up eating much seafood beyond tuna sandwiches, fish sticks or the occasional salmon dinners her parents made. But in 2015, when Olbur became pregnant with a daughter of her own, she heeded the advice of her physician and deliberately began adding more seafood to her diet as a way to boost brain development and to ensure the health of her growing baby. It turns out, she wasn't alone in upping her fish fare. According to the annual Fisheries of the...

There are less than 500 North Atlantic right whales left in the world. And now, one less: This weekend, one of the 45-ton creatures was found dead off the coast of Maine, completely entangled in fishing line — head, flippers and all. This was not an isolated incident. In late June, an endangered blue whale wrapped in fishing gear was seen struggling off the coast of Dana Point in Southern California. Rescuers were unable to extricate it before it swam away. And earlier this month, rescuers...

Animal rights have come a long way over the last century, providing, of course, we're not talking about fish. While other vertebrates have slowly been recognized as social, feeling, even sentient beings, fish remain good for three things: owning, catching and eating.

The state fire marshal and local police are investigating a blaze aboard a lobster boat at Stonington Town Dock. The fire is thought to have broken out in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and may have been burning for some time before the alarm was raised at about 4.30 am.

Fishermen in the Gulf of Maine have been harvesting lobsters at record highs. That’s in contrast to fishermen in Southern New England, where there has been a sharp decline in the lobster population since the late1990s.

It’s the middle of summer and for those lucky enough to live in a coastal state, like us here in Connecticut, that means it's beach time! Whether you’re looking for an inexpensive outing with the family, to catch a tan, or simply to get away from the daily grind, beaches offer it all.

Bill Coppersmith, a fisherman in Maine, might want to buy a lottery ticket. He's gotten pretty lucky lately. This week he caught a rare orange lobster while fishing with his sternman Brian Skillings, writes the Portland Press Herald . The paper talked to Robert Bayer, executive director of The Lobster Institute at the University of Maine, who said that the actual odds of catching an orange lobster would just be a guess. But "it's one in several million, there's no doubt about that," he said....

For the last few decades, lobsters have had to prove that they were healthy enough to ship by having blood drawn. Now, thanks to a Connecticut native, all they’ll have to do is prove their strength in the most lobster of methods: by squeezing sensors with their claws.

When it needs to serve 75,000 raw oysters to 3,000 people in one weekend, Washington D.C.'s landmark Old Ebbitt Grill calls in reinforcements. It hires expert oyster shuckers to help out with its Oyster Riot event each year. And for most of the last 20 years, those experts have included 59-year-old George Hastings. Hastings, white-bearded and sturdy, with an easy, Santa Claus-style belly laugh, has been shucking for about 40 years. He's a two-time national champion (yes, there is such an...

Caviar was once the food of kings and czars — and for a sturgeon, it meant death. But a new technique of massaging the ripe eggs from a female sturgeon — without killing or even cutting the fish open— could make caviar more abundant, more affordable, and more accessible to all. Best of all, says Angela Köhler, the German scientist who has spent nine years developing the new production system, "no-kill caviar" — also being called " cruelty-free caviar " and " correct caviar " by the people...

I get way too much of my information from movies and this year large container ships played a role in two major films. The first was Captain Phillips , an account of piracy in the Indian Ocean. The problem with that movie is that it didn't ask any fundamental questions about the method of moving stuff around. Those questions were implied in All is Lost , a movie that begins with Robert Redford wakening to find out his small sailboat has been pierced by one of those...

Oysters have been part of the human diet for thousands of years. It’s no wonder then that many of us know them as a favored menu item. But these beloved bivalves have a history that extends far beyond the dinner plate.

New England chefs like Andrew Taylor and Mike Wiley are still coming to terms with the news: No more shrimp until further notice. This week, regulators shut down the New England fishery for Gulf of Maine shrimp for the first time in 35 years. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission judged the stocks of the popular shrimp, also known as northern shrimp, to be dangerously low. "Shrimp is just one of those treasures in the winter of Maine," says Taylor, who co-owns the upscale Hugo's...

An old myth maintains that you should only eat oysters during those months with the letter R in their names. This was both because of the higher bacteria contentand therefore the greater chance of diseaseduring summer months, and because of the health hazards associated with shipping raw seafood in an age before refrigeration. Oysters have been a popular food in Connecticut since colonial times and even before. Connecticuts natural oyster beds are thousands of years old and Native Americans...

Most likely the lobster youve eaten in Connecticut this summer isnt local. T he number of lobsters has declined severely in Long Island Sound over the last decade. Now local fisherman are pulling traps in preparation of a mandatory closed season in the weeks ahead. The decision by the Atlantic States Fisheries Commission impacts all of Long Island Sound. This means lobstermen in Connecticut and New York wont be able to catch lobster from September 8 thru November 28. David Simpson is Director...